Earthward bound
by axg
Summary: On their seemingly neverending quest for the blue Planet, the crew of the Battlestar Galactica encounters something on the way that could change their lives forever.. Have they found the way to Earth?
1. Desperate Needs

------- authors note ------

This is my first fanfiction on BSG2003, and please bare with me if I did not get any details right. Please mail me if you have any corrections or want to add a bit of info I missed on about. More to come soon.

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Commander Adama stood in the CIC, or Combat Information Center, onboard the Battlestar Galactica. It was the last surviving Ship in the Colonial Military after the Cylon Holocaust two years in the past. He was the military leader of a ragtag fleet of civilian refugees, the last hope for the survival of mankind. Their target - the mythical Planet Earth, the thirteenth Tribe of Kobol, the reason all people kept on going. They believed in the speech held by him two years earlier,  
as he told them he knows where to find Earth and how to get there. The only problem is - it was a lie.

"Sir, the Fleet has completed the Jump, all ships are present and accounted for." someone reported,  
forcing Adama to refocus on the here and now.

"Good work Mr. Gaeta, please order the Fleet to stand down their FTL drives, we put enough stress on the engines already in the last couple of days. If our predictions are right, we will stay here for a while." he replied.

This stop - a luxury they could not afford often due to increased Cylon activity in the Sector - was a neccessary one. They once again were running low on the most basic of supplies - water. The area they jumped in showed to be a promising system on sensors, possibly containing one or more planets with an atmosphere and liquid water on the surface.

"Sir, sensors report that there is indeed one planet in this system, orbiting the central star at the outer edge of the "green zone". It is possible that there is not only water but also an Atmosphere on that Planet." Gaeta stated.  
"Excellent Mr. Gaeta. Please monitor the system for Cylon activity, it's a bit too quiet for my liking. It's always disquieting if things go too smoothly." Adama answered.

"Colonel Tigh, send out a recon Viper to the planet to verify our sensor results, and just in case prepare a recon Team and a Raptor too. You'll lead the expedition in case the Viper results show to be promising. I don't want to move the fleet deeper inside the system before we know it's quiet over there."

Tigh saluted, and began relaying the order to the appropriate stations. Shortly after, a standard Combat Air Patrol guarding a specially designed recon Viper, equipped with advanced sensors, but no weapons, was launched and set a course for the planet. It took the small group a few hours to get there, so everyone in the CIC relaxed and turned back to routine work - everyone but Adama.

His nerves were quite strained - the frequent attacks by Cylon forces had left their marks on him - not sleeping very well only worsened the situation. Since he got nothing to do until the results came in, he decided to take a break and get back to his office - he had made a habit out of building models of old sea-going vessels - and the last one .. did not survive a hard time the Fleet went through. He decided to re-build another vessel, bearing the name Discovery - a sailing ship that set out to discover new land,  
and ultimately found a new continent back in the old days, before industrialization started to hasten the pace of civilisation. He found the name very fitting, as the only hope they had at the moment also was a big discovery, one they all hoped for. They needed to find a way to the mythical planet Earth.  
A few hours later, the intercom rang and Commander Adama was ordered back to the CIC - he did not get very far with his model, since his thoughts were not easy at rest as he would like them to be. He was at high alert all the time, planning the next step should they be disturbed by a Cylon fleet during this mission.

As he reached the CIC, the preliminary results from the recon team were brought up on the monitors - the planet contained an atmosphere, but much to their disappointment, it was not breathable. It contained the usual components expected from a planet in the green zone, but the oxygen levels were far too low for a human to breathe it. "At least it is not toxic", he thought.

But, one thing they got right - the planet contained an ocean - or, more to be exact - a very, very big lake filled with liquid water. It needed to be desalinated, but that was not a big deal and could be done on the spot with minor work. He was as pleased as he could be daring the circumstances.

"Shall I move out with a recon team in a Raptor, Sir?" Tigh asked.

"Mr. Gaeta, have your scans turned up anything unusual in the last hours?"

"No sir, the system is quiet - apart from this planet, there is only a small asteroid belt a bit outside. No unusual movements have been recorded on DRADIS and the data sent by the Recon team shows that the planet - at least the quarter the team mapped so far - contains no signs of life of any sort apart vom micro-bacteria in the reported salt-water-lake. Nothing to worry about if you ask me Sir." he responded.

"Well .. Colonel, I guess that won't be neccessary. Time is of the essence here, and we simply just don't have the luxury to waste time anymore. We'll have a hard time as it is because we need all personell to wear pressure suits while working. The recon flight is cancelled" Adama answered.

"Signal the Fleet, we are going to move closer in the system. All ships containing desalination systems are to be travelling at high priority, the others follow. We need to get this Operation to work quickly and efficently. The Cylons have shown an exorbitant expertise in tracking our movements, and I'd like not to be in the midst of a culmination of pipes and tugs between our ships when they jump in." he ordered.

The Fleet began to slowly move in the direction of the planet, using sublight only. It took them quite a few hours to get there,  
but when all ships had arrived the work began quickly. All available Raptors began ferrying personell and equipment to and from the planet directly to a site scouted out by the recon Viper, suited for installing their equipment.

No-one knew that they would make an even bigger discovery than this planet within a day's time.

- End of Chapter one -


	2. Wireless, or Radio?

"Commander Adama, could you please come to my station?" Dualla asked.

Adama looked up and curiously turned towards her station and began to move.  
"Yes Lieutnant, what is it?"

"Since we began the water retrieving mission I had not much to do here at Comms, so I started some system checks and analysis and - well, as you know sir, our ships use a very narrow band of frequencies for wireless communication, as most frequency areas were quite polluted back around at the colonies and - my system check used to contain not only our active frequencies, but also a wide band to test the limits of the equipment. Usually those checks turn out that most frequencies are quite silent - but here.. well I found a range of frequencies which are quite active in this region of space. Not only busier on background noise but even more busy than our wireless frequencies. It is a near constant flow of signals on a wide band, and it varies. It does not look like being of natural origin at all."

"Can you make any sense of it? Is it Cylon in origin?" he asked, his attention growing.

"No Sir, not at the moment.. I can not even begin to decide if it may be Cylon.. but I would say that it looks a bit like a frequency modulated signal.. like a carrier wave containing information of some sort. I'll need a while to analyse the data since we are not networked and my computing capacity here at Comm is quite limited, but I'd like to deepen in this research with your permission sir. It.. well it frightens me a bit." She answered, feeling quite unsure.

"Yes Lieutnant, follow that trail. I don't feel good about this. It could be a cylon trap, and I had too much of them already if you ask me. Check out what you can, and get any help you need. I want to know what it is as soon as possible". With this words, he turned back to CIC and gave temporal command back to Colonel Tigh before left for his quarters. Had he not been worried before, he was now.

A few days later, Lieutnant Dualla held a briefing on the results she and her team had brought up in the past days. As it turned out, they were quite .. surprising.

"..As I initially predicted, those signals really are frequency-modulated data streams, containing analogue information. We have figured out that this streams contain two types of information - one is audio, the frequency modulated data, the other is video, in form of amplitude modulation.  
Quite a clever idea actually, to use both frequency and amplitude for signal transmission, something we never tried back in the Colonies.  
So, as strange as it seems - these signals are artificially created and not naturally caused. Further studies showed, that there are streams only containing audio, and that there are some that contain both audio and video simultaniously - we sadly only managed to construct a receiver for the audio only transmissions yet though.

What we found was quite a surprise - speech and music, obviously of human origin. We also found out that those transmissions are not bound to one language, or even a few. We literally collected samples of words and sentences in over twenty languages, and that was only the point where we had to stop to focus on a few samples or we would never achieve any analysis at all. None of the languages sound anywhere near Colonial,  
so we have tried to match the samples to the written language samples we have recorded in our ancient scrolls regarding to the thirteenth tribe - and we singled out a language in the streams which bears the most striking resemblance to the old texts. It seems that the language - it is called English, that we could find out - evolved quite a bit since the ancient days, but it is still recognizeable. We could even decipher some easy sentences in the stream telling things like "This is KBBl Radio and you are listening to Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel". The "KBBL Radio" part seems to state the name of the broadcaster sending this FM transmissions, a system they call "Radio", and the latter "Elvis Presley" seems to be a name, but we have no Idea what a "Heartbreak Hotel" could be. Sadly we did not have much vocabulary in the scrolls, so most of the spoken sentences don't make any sense to us now. Based on the data, we have concluded that this must in fact be a population of humans originating from the twelve colonies, or one of it's descendants. To this point, we have found no record how the locals call their planet, or if it is a planet at all. We now focus all our power on recording samples of the mentioned language, and try to figure out a broader vocabulary while we do so."

Adama sighed in relief - Earth, or at least another descendant tribe of the Twelve Colonies - proved not to be a myth after all.

"Lieutnant, since you showed us the mentioned sample earlier in the CIC, and it is in fact music even though it does not correspond to anything ever created in the colonies, you have given us all new hope that our quest may finally have a good chance of being successful. Do you have any other news regarding the finding?"

"In fact I have Commander Adama, another thing my system check turned up. The signals are all coming in from a distinctive direction, and seem to be originating from a very sparsely populated sector of space. Initial analysis of star charts and sensor data have ruled out most of the systems in that sector to start with, and we have found one candidate to be very possibly the source of the signal. It is a small, yellow sun, divided by over four light years even to its nearest neighbour."

Everyone in the room was speechless. Not only do they now know that someone IS out there, they even knew where he was.

"Lieutnant, how far away is this sun from our current position?" Adama asked, everyone's attention turning back to Dualla.

"Around 50 Light Years give or take a Year or two, we could be there in 4 Weeks if we jump non-stop, stressing our supplies of Tyllium a bit."

"Four Weeks?" Tigh exclaimed, "that would be a hard time for the engines, especially on the civilian ships. Please give an estimate using our usual jump parameters."

"Then we would likely need around two to three months, but it still is a very manageable distance."

Adama turned to everyone and took the initiative.

"Gentlemen, you heard it. As soon as we finish our supply mission here, we will set course for the system Dualla suggested. We'll use Tigh's Jump plan. One more thing: this information is top-secret. I do not want ANY civilians to know where we are headed, and what we have found out. It will be a hard time already informing the quorum and the president alone, and I can't even imagine the frenzy the press would start if any information leaks out. It would cause mass hysteria, and that is the last thing I need on my arse at the moment. Did I make myself clear?"

Everyone nodded.

The meeting was over, and everyone returned to their posts. Everyone but Adama. He had much to think about, and once more turned to the model ship in his quarters.  
- End of Chapter two - 


	3. A Voyager to be found

The weeks passed without incident, and the resupply mission was finished successfully and without any Cylon contact.  
But with quite a steady pace the nervosity began to rise not only in Commander Adama, but also in the informed crew.  
Everyone was working on the analysis of the FM transmissions now, trying to figure out the meaning.The audio programs they encountered were shortly after classified as entertaining channels without many useful informations, despite the finding that they broadcasted a news program on a regular basis. Since the names of people or regions used in the progam did not mean anything to them, they could not extract much useful information from this broadcasts, although many found the transmitted music to be innovative and pleasant to listen to. They even started to cut out the individual songs and save them on their personal music terminals.

A month after they started their journey towards the coordinates Dualla provided, they eventually had a breakthrough: They had figured out how to revisualize the transmitted images, although the conversion process left much to be desired - the images were in black and white.

The first show they figured out how to watch turned out to be a quite interesting program showing - often comical - everyday situations in a family life, which showed them that these people actually looked like humans, albeit with a very weird taste for clothing an hairstyles. Women tended to wear long, not very practical skirts or dresses, and the overall level of technology seemed to be very below any standard the colonials knew. 

This in itself was the biggest dissapointment in decoding the signals, since it diminished the hope that these people could help the Colonials in their struggle against the Cylons. It proved however, that the transmissions were indeed coming from the surface of a planet, and not a stray space station or ship.  
But some of the shown technology - cars, trains, ships - seemed to be sophisticated enough that it would be in their power to help these people in developing a level of technology neccessary to build supplies and spare parts for the Colonials. They could not find out however how the machinery and vehicles the locals in the program used are powered. Tyllium was obviously not the source of energy, but what was used as a substitue?

No-one knew. Another program they could decipher showed something that looked like an alien invasion and the local military's attempt on fighting it - this, even though you could see the really bad effects from a mile distant - led to the decision to be very careful when entering the solar system and not direct any attention to their presence at first at all, since the military depicted in the movie showed to be a dangerous foe, even for Colonial hardware.  
Not very sophisticated, but available in sheer numbers. From what they figured, they had another surprise waiting for them - it seemed this tribe never even attemted spaceflight. They could not find any trace at all saying that Spaceflight was happening or even planned on this World. The only mention of a "Flight to the Moon" as it was called - THE moon, as if there was only one in the universe - depicted a big Cannon on the ground as the method of travel, and was quickly put in the "fictional program" category shortly after analaysing it. Even though only a small part of the crew knew of the events and broadcasts they analyzed, now including the quorum of twelve and president Roslin, who strongly confirmed on Adama's view to keep this as low and slow as they could - more and more of them began to enjoy these fictional broadcasts as a source of entertainment even after their respective shifts had ended. This tribe had a good sense of humour, Roslin said while watching a Program called "The Waltons". It turned out to be broadcasted on a regular schedule, and so she made a habit out of watching it after they decoded it.

Thus, the weeks passed by, and even though they could decipher more and more of the language, they still did not hear the word "Earth" in use even a single time.. people already started to lose hope that they really have found the thirteenth tribe and that their journey will have come to an end in a month's time. But still, morale was better than a month ago.

Still, the day they headed out for the final jump - right into the outskirts of the target solar system - everyone was nervous. The atmosphere in the CIC was as thick as if you could cut it with a not very hot knife - everybody was curious - and fearsome - of what they would find.

Initial probing had resulted in the system being a very crowded place - eight planets, an asteroid belt, many dwarf planets, and quite a lot of debris floating around. Not the best place to jump into, and that - added to the planned safety measures - led to the decision to jump into the system quite near the outer rim, past even the farthest orbit of any dwarf planet the system contained. This particular dwarf was interesting in it's own right as it had another orbit inclination in relation to all other bodies in the system - a stellar oddity that the astronomers will love to analyze should the opportunity arise.

Everybody was nervous as the countdown to jump clocked down, and as it happend, everyone felt even more disturbed by the FTL drive loading up than usual.

Shortly after, the fleet returned to normal space - right where it was meant to be.

"Report!" was the first command given by Commander Adama.

"Reports coming in sir - 2 Ships missing at the moment.. no wait a minute, there they are. They jumped a few seconds late. All ships there and accounted for sir." Gaeta looked relieved.

"Very good. Scan the area, notify me of anything unusual"

"Scanning Sir, but this may take a while.  
As you know, this system is not exactly what you'd call .. tidy"  
"Launch standard CAP, I want to be on the safe side if someone turns up uninvited. Also signal the fleet to keep the drives hot, if we need to get out fast." Adama ordered.

"Sir, wouldn't it be a good idea to have a recon Viper out there? This system is so big, using only scanners could take a week before we even know how to navigate in this system. A viper would be quite more mobile and agile in searching the vicinity." Tigh suggested.

"Good thinking Colonel. Order Starbuck to board a recon Viper immediately and begin scanning the perimeter. She may be reckless, but she is just the pilot for the harsh weather out there."

Shortly after, the recon Viper was launched again, and Adama could not have chosen a better pilot for the job - Kara "Starbuck" Thrace was a bit on the wild side - but that kept her alive in regions just like this one.

She flew some quite unusual maneuvers to make herself comfortable, and then started out on a bigger scan pattern which took her from the orbit of the outer dwarf star up to the region where a spacial anomaly slows down solar wind considerably and is usually depicted as the outer border of a solar system. On this route, she then noticed a small blip on DRADIS that catched her interest. It travelled with a velocity of about 12 mi/s outward from the solar system, which is something an asteroid normally tends not to do as far as she understood astrophysics, which admittedly was not much. 

"Galactica Starbuck, I have a small object on DRADIS which seems to move in a direction outside the solar system with quite a velocity - I may not be a scientist, but in my book things don't do that all by themselves. Shall I investigate?

"Starbuck Galactica, the old man says you are cleared for an in-depth look at the object. How long will you need?"

"It'll take an hour or two - this thing is fast even for Viper standards. But I can do it."

"Roger Starbuck, good hunting. Galactica out."

As ordered, Starbuck turned towards the strange DRADIS contact and fired her afterburner. Even at top speed it took her an hour and a half to reach the object up to visual range - but what she saw dazzled her.

"Galactica, Starbuck. I have the object in sight. It is not an asteroid, but a probe of some sort. Defineately man-made. It seems to carry a big radio antenna facing the inner part of the solar system, and an array of antennas of some sort, I can't say what they are for. It seems to be out here for a while, it got quite a bit of dents and scratches, looks even worse than the Viper I usually fly. Can't register any activity on the device but a bit of decaying radioactivity. This thing seems to be dead in space.  
Mind if I take a souvenir?"

"Galactica Starbuck, this is Adama. Amazing finding. Don't worry, you'll get your souvenir, I'promise. We will send out a recovery Raptor out to your position, just stay where you are."

Three hours later, the Raptor arrived, carrying a special set of robotic arms able to "catch" and tow the object back to Galactica. It took them the better half of a day to do so.

- End of Chapter three - 


	4. What a Voyager had to tell

---- authors note ----  
I know the described plate was - in the listed form - never mounted on Voyager 1/2, but on the Pioneer probes.  
The "Sounds of Earth" recording attached to the Voyager probe just did not make it for the story, so I took a bit of authors freedom in this regard.  
---------------------- 

The Raptor brought the probe in with no problems, and shortly after they began examining it. It was definately human-made, but a very primitive design. How it even got into space was a mystery to anyone looking at it. Defineately not by using the tiny thrusters mounted on the sides of the probe.

The most amazing find they discovered was actually one of the most obvious - a big golden plate on the outside, engraved with a schematic of the solar system, showing where the probe originated - it was the third planet from the sun - but also a schematic of a male and a female human body. This proved that it must have been designed by the people that also sent the FM transmissions, bringing up the question how old those transmissions were and how much the civilisation on that planet had evolved from that point. The probe looked as if it had been out in space for quite a while. This only added to Adamas decision not to take any chances while analysing this system and it's inhabitants.

Further recon trips provided Galactica with not much more but the discovery of a sister probe similarly designed and built like the one they captured earlier - and a general layout of the solar system. Most planets but the inner four were gas giants or icy rocks, and therefore of no immediate interest for Galactica. The only significant finding was that the dwarf planet with the funny orbit they encountered earlier contained a quite rich deposit of Tyllium, a fact they received with quite a pleasure, since Tyllium reserves were low as usual throughout the fleet.  
Based on this information Adama decided that it would be best to take the fleet not directly to the third planet, but to establish a base in orbit around the fouth planet, a small, reddish rock in space. Close enough to see the third Planet, but far enough to be undisturbed - or so he thought.

It was Starbuck again who got sent on a recon trip to the fourth planet who found out that it was quite not what Adama depicted - directly after arriving in orbit she discovered that there are at least a dozen orbiting satellites, at least four still active and transmitting data. She also discovered two active signal sources on the planet's surface, but did not want to risk investigating it further - the plan to use this planet as a silent listening post had to be scrapped. Just how advanced are these people?

Adama sighed as Starbuck finished her report back in his office, and tried to find a "Plan B" - there must be one he thought. There is always a Plan B.

Later that day, he ordered his senior staff into a SitRep meeting.

"As you all know now, the situation has turned out to be quite more complicated than we imagined. We expected them to be not spacefaring from what we have learned en route, but it turned out that they are quite active in sending probes around in the whole system. We found probes or what was left of them in the vicinity of nearly all planetary bodies, and even some orbiting asteroids or comets. We hope that we have avoided detection by now, but since no fleet has jumped in our back and opened fire at us yet we are quite sure that we got away with our unwary way up until now. The question is, how shall we proceed? We know that they have quite a level of military technology, and that they have space faring capabilities - even though we don't understand how their probes work or how they even get off the planet.

Starbuck was quite irritated to find four active satellites in orbit around the fourth planet, but as we found out, the third is not only orbited by a few satellites, there are thousands of them. We don't know what they are there for, or what they can or can not do. I must admit I'm out of a definite plan how to proceed, that is why I called you all here. Please start suggesting."

"Commander", Gaeta started, "maybe we should just try broadcasting to them on the frequencies we have learned that we have no hostile intentions? Would that work?"

"This would be a good idea Mr. Gaeta, unfortunately, we know how to receive the signals, how to send them is quite beyond our recognition at this point. I must regretfully admit, that possibility is out of the question. More?"

"I think we should let the Fleet stay where they are and just jump into orbit. Scare the hell outta them. That will show them we mean business and are not to be fooled around with. I'm quite sure we can withstand anything they could throw at us." Tigh suggested.

"That would be quite the military approach I expected from you Colonel, but I am not sure that would work in our favour. Remember, we want those people to help us, not to start shooting."

"Maybe we should combine both ideas?" Dualla suggested.

"We fly into orbit, slowly, not by FTL. And we transmit a "we are friendly" warning in their language, but on colonial frequencies. They may not use them regularly, but maybe they are able to receive and decipher them like we did with theirs. This would be the least violent approach. And they would have time to adapt to the Idea that we are coming, since we would need a few days at least if we travel the distance by sublight only."

"Good point Lieutnant. Seems like a reasonable attempt. If there are no objections, I'd like everyone to prepare for execution of this plan immedeately. It may be risky, but I really see no other options at this point. Dismissed."

- End of Chapter four -


	5. Sailing among the stars

Soon after, preparations began throughout the fleet. Since Galactica would be gone for a while (with the option of an emergency FTL jump back to the fleet should the need arise) it was decided that at least two squadrons of Vipers should be left behind to protect the fleet until Galactica can arrive. Since none of the ships was built with a Viper bay, they improvised one on one of the civilian freighters, which got a big cargo bay which was nearly empty by now and could house not only the two squadrons, but also the neccessary equipment and personell. The modifications took them only four days, a feature only possible by the motivation given to them on the possibility that they finally reached the end of their journey. Still, only military personell was informed of the true findings they stumbled upon, the cover story was that only galactica was able to withstand detected radioactivity deeper in the system, where they suspected large amounts of mineable metal. Even though, the general morale seemed to form an upward tending curve.  
"Mr. Gaeta, set a course for the planet, but keep it slow. We do not want to scare these people.. more than neccessary.  
Begin course corrections when you are ready."

"Sir, with a decent speed and a very conservatively plotted course" - the inner system was a quite untidy place and a hell to navigate in - "we should be entering orbit in two weeks." Gaeta responded.  
Shortly after, Galactica began the two-week long journey to the inner system. A day later, they additionally began to broadcast the message Dualla suggested and prepared - it read "This is the Colonial Ship (they intentiously avoided the term "Battlestar" - it occured to them as being the wrong wording for a "we come in peace" broadcast) Galactica. We are en route to your planet, and we come in peace"  
They only hoped that those humans were in fact as technically able as they expected them to be - if this message does not get through, things could get nasty. They did not even have to rewatch "War of the Worlds" to get to that conclusion, the images of a nuclear, ground based attack on the intruders was firmly engraved in their minds.  
Everybody tried to use the time they had left to the fullest - Adama and Tigh studied war movies they encountered in the captured transmissions, President Roslin and her staff tried to figure out how the political system works on the planet based on some shows and movies they captured,  
and Dualla and her team tried their best to incorporate a translation matrix into the comm system, since they quite lacked native speakers.  
Starbuck and the other pilots instead tended to amuse themselves - they had found some war movies of their own, dealing with primitive, atmospheric planes and dogfighting - they enjoyed them more than they analyzed them, but you could never know what knowledge you might need.  
All in all time passed slowly, as the blue planet grew slightly larger every day, up to the point where you could make it out with your own eyes.  
- End of Chapter five - 


	6. SETI

-- authors note --  
sorry this one took so long, and may be a bit unfinished.

I have this sitting on the shelves for a while now and just had no time to refine it -

I will work on it on a later date I hope.

Also please bear with me that the updates won't be as frequent,  
since I began a new job and that kinda eats my time. Have fun!  
------------------  
A week later. SETI Laboratories, United States, Earth

Alan and Charly sat relaxed in their chairs in front of the Computer Systems controlling the biggest listening post on the whole Planet - Project SETI, or "Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence" attemted to find signals created by other species out in space and to decode them.

It was night shift, and as you could expect - nothing much was happening when the only personell you'd afford to monitor all the equipment were two students slacking off time. As usual they were bored to hell, as the most surprising moment in their work tended to be when Jeff - the guy who usually delivers them their midnight pizza - would turn up. So they sat, and ate, and were half sleeping when suddenly, a very large marker on the screen in front of them turned red, and an audible warning sounded."Signal identified. Signal identified. Analyzing now" - both literally fell from their seats and as they recovered slowly turned to the screens - there it was. A signal, strong against background noise, on a very narrow frequency band. Even a man with a radio set could'nt have missed that one - and as analysis showed - it repeated itself at an exact time interval.  
They already received the sequence three times now.  
Both knew exactly what to do - they hasted for the telephone and informed their superiors of what they have found.

Ten minutes later, the place was crawling with people in white coats - scientists - who took the shortest route over from NASA. Both boys were sitting on their usual places, but instead of the usual movie they liked to watch on one of the screens, it now showed a map of space - and a precise point inside the solar system from which the signal seemed to originate.  
"But that's impossible! If this reading is right, the signal is coming straight from Saturn orbit or even closer! If there really is someone out there who can.." he got interrupted by another,  
even more excited scientist.  
"Sir! Sir! We decoded the signal! It is in fact an FM transmission"  
"What? On speakers, Dr. Callahan"  
Shortly after, filled with static, the following message filled the air:  
"This is the Colonial Ship Galactica. We are en route to your planet, and we come in peace"  
Everyone gazed with their mouths open - even though the wordings were very accented - like when a japanese person tries to speak english the first time - they clearly understood the message.  
Aliens - they were on their way to Earth. And they spoke english.  
Everybody frowned on that image - all that years of searching finally turned out to be not only worthwhile, but also to be the first ever proof that alien life existed. They drew straws on the opportunity to make the call to the president, to inform him of the newly arosen situation - in the end, one of the students got the honor of calling the big man himself.  
He listened. He laughed. Until they played him the message. Then he frowned.  
They needed a plan, and fast. First he called NASA, and cancelled everything going on until this was sorted out - Shuttle Missions,  
Science Experiments, Space Telemitry - everything had to focus on the situation at hand.  
The first thing they did was to use Hubble to take an image of the region the signal was originating from - and what they found was an even bigger discovery than the transmission. Exactly on the spot, they could make out the shade of a ship, exactly where the signal originated. Hubble was not able to make out any details on the surface,  
they would have to wait until it gets closer in, but they could get a good enough trajectory reading to know when it will arrive - they got a week to prepare.

- End of Chapter six -


End file.
